New research form Korea shows that turmeric helps boost weight loss in a unique way. Turmeric may be able to change bad fat cells into good fat.

Fat used to be a scary word, but nowadays health experts are realizing the importance of good fats. Our bodies have two different types of fat: white fat, which is bad fat, and brown fat, which is considered good fat. Diet, environmental factors, and activity levels influence the ratio of good to bad fats in the body.

The role of white fat is to be stored as energy, while brown fat is more able to be metabolized. Most fat in people with obesity is white fat.

The study abstract outlines the following ways in which turmeric helps change bad fat to good fat:

• By enhancing the expression of brown fat specific genes. This is a form of nutrigenomic “epigenetic modification,” which means that a nutrient is capable of altering a cell’s patterns of gene expression “from the outside in,” as it were, resulting in significant changes in the structure and function of the cells involved.By stimulating the production of new mitochondria, as evidenced by increased activity of the electron transport chain and increased fatty acid oxidation.

• Mitochondrial biogenesis can be stimulated with other natural substances and therapeutic modalities and is an intervention that may be of special benefit in age-associated loss of muscle and brain function, enhancing athletic performance, and in improving mitochondrial disorders. [see our database keyword: “Mitochondrial Biogenesis”]

• By increasing protein levels of hormone-sensitive lipase and p-acyl-CoA carboxylase, two markers that play a role in increasing fat-degrading processes (lipolysis) and the suppression of new fat production (lipogenesis).

• By increasing the activity AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). AMPK activity is something of a cellular metabolic master switch that improves metabolic homeostasis, which is often out of balance in overweight and obese individuals.

The study authors conclude: “Our findings suggest that curcumin plays a dual modulatory role in inhibition of adipogenesis as well as induction of the brown fat-like phenotype and thus may have potential therapeutic implications for treatment of obesity.”

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